Minccino Community Research Day!

I’m never sure what these events are actually called. Pokemon Go itself calls these events “Limited Research Events” but that makes them seem not exciting at all. But calling it a “Community Day” makes little sense as well. I like to compromise and call it a Community Research Day. Rather than have a bunch of Pokemon spawn in the wild for you to scoop up in the hundreds, during these events, the Pokemon in question that has a chance to be shiny can only be acquired by completing research tasks in a small 3 hour window, a bit like a community day, but not.

The previous Community Research Days were all VERY hit and miss. The Feebas event was awful as the shiny chances were shitty for everywhere but the US, and even then the chances were still pretty shitty and the tasks were incredibly tedious, especially since it demanded high accuracy throws but didn’t have increased spawns and what Pokemon were around were notoriously hard to hit. The Clampearl day was great, assuming you took the time to play the whole event and the spawns were good (this is when most people got their shiny Feebas), but the tasks were repetitive. The Lotad day was tiring, with a higher duration (five hours instead of three), harder tasks and lower shiny chances.

Thankfully, the Minccino Community Research Day was a pretty good balance between all three, with plenty of varied tasks and plenty of Pokemon to catch as well.

So what did this Community Research Day do right? Most things, actually.

It had plenty of different, varied tasks: Alongside things like Make 3 Great Throws, Make 5 Nice Throws, Catch 5 Normal Types, Make 2 Great Throws In A Row and Make 3 Nice Throws In A Row, there were some incredibly simple tasks too, like catching a Patrat or Bidoof, catching a Minun, Plusle or Pikachu or catching a Rattata. Other tasks were also pretty simple, like spinning 2 Pokestops or feeding 3 berries to Pokemon. The hardest tasks were battling in a Gym, battling in a Raid, defeating a Team Rocket Go Grunt or doing a Super-Effective Charge Attack in a Gym Battle, the first and last of which were difficult because most of the raids around had party hat Raticates on them, meaning you couldn’t even do gym battles, but since there were plenty of other tasks available, you weren’t missing out on skipping these two.

The shiny chances also seemed to be really good, perhaps better than Clampearl day. Our group of four all managed to get at least one shiny Minccino, and, with enough pinap berries, enough candy to evolve a Minccino as well.

But this community day also did two other things right: it had plenty of other Pokemon spawning as well, which you could somewhat reliably do Nice and Great throws on (well, aside from the Minuns and Plusles) but many the Pokemon that were spawning also had shiny chances as well, meaning you could stumble across a couple of extra shinies maybe.

That being said, the two extra shinies I got were from before and after the event – a shiny female Sneasel (my 5th) from opening a research reward and a shiny Onix from someone’s Magnetic Lure. The luck was all-round pretty good because one of us also got a 100% Minccino, one of us got a 100% purified Psyduck and later on someone found their second shiny Magikarp.

Overall, it was a great little event. Probably more tiring though because we had to do more walking, simply because we had to walk between Pokestops, which aren’t always close together, but we all got what we came for.

Then again, it does help that my local area has way, way, WAY more Pokestops now. The local Pokestops are still split into three separate areas that are too far to walk to if you are on a time limit, but the Pokestop quantity has nearly doubled in all three areas. If it wasn’t for level 40 players (which I am not one of yet.. I would be if people didn’t open Best Friend-giving gifts without informing me so I can put a Lucky Egg on…) we wouldn’t have many stops at all.

And that brings up the biggest issue by far with these Community Research Events. If you don’t have many Pokestops, you’re screwed and can’t play the event. There are ways to fix this, either by adding more Pokestops or making it so you can spin Pokestops for research tasks more than once during events (maybe once an hour?) but if you’re in a rural area, these events are worse than normal Community Days.

But considering we hadn’t seen a Community Research Event up until now, maybe there’s things in the works? Who knows…